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Review by Bruce Tierney
Dateline: Brazzaville (somewhere deep in the Congolese jungle). A feticheuse, a low-budget sorceress of sorts, kneels on the floor, intently reading the pattern formed by cowrie shells strewn on a mat. The psychic prognosis is not good. If author Redmond O'Hanlon and his faithful sidekick Lary Shaffer leave Africa within two months the Spirits of the forest will not harm them . . . one day extra, and one will die. To the "rational" Western mind, the notion might seem superstitious, but after a few days in Africa the supernatural can become frighteningly believable.
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O'Hanlon displays a naturalist's gift for observation of detail, as well as a humorist's sense of the absurd. |
O'Hanlon is no stranger to adventure travel; previous jaunts have taken him as far afield as Borneo. This time, he's in search of Mokele Mbembe, Africa's answer to the Loch Ness monster. No one has had a great deal of success in photographing Mokele Mbembe; film has become curiously over- or underdeveloped, images indistinct. Lake Tele, supposed home to the elusive creature, is a Jurassic Park-like setting in which a latter-day dinosaur would not be particularly out of place, but so far only anecdotal evidence of same exists. Additionally, unlike Loch Ness, Lake Tele is exceptionally hard to reach; the path is littered with the typical African obstacles: wild animals of unfriendly and often poisonous persuasion, carnivorous or otherwise unpleasant fauna, corrupt government officials and the primitive magic which is such a part of daily African life.
O'Hanlon displays a naturalist's gift for observation of detail, as well as a humorist's sense of the absurd: "It was worse than any hangover I had ever had (but then so was the red wine). Returning from our forced walks, as we passed the shuttered Iranian embassy with its two black dogs which leaped silently against the high chicken-wire perimeter fence, as we made our way home past breeze-block walls with broken beer bottles cemented into their tops, I realized that it hurt just to touch the hair on my head. The final steps down to Les Bougainvillees set off a slap-slap of pain inside my skull, like water in a bucket. The back of my neck locked rigid. My intestines seemed to uncoil and move beneath my stomach like a sidewinder . . . " The description proceeds, graphically describing the remainder of the digestive process in terms which will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has visited the Third World or eaten overripe fruit.
Black-and-white photographs and numerous maps punctuate the text here and there throughout the book; O'Hanlon's bearded visage graces several of them, often with the long-suffering look of a man beset by pests; in one picture, a swarm of bees suck sweat from his hat while he looks dejectedly into a cup of coffee.
"No Mercy" is O'Hanlon's best work to date. Insightful and funny, it takes us places we'll likely never visit (perhaps have no desire to visit, for that matter), combining compelling narrative with a cracking good story.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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